28. A BAD SISTER.
(The original, in the Hottentot language, is in Sir G. Grey’s Library, G. Krönlein’s Manuscript, pp. 15, 16.)
Copper and Weather, it is said, were man and wife, and begat a daughter, who married amongst other people.
Her three brothers came to visit her; and she did not know them (as such), though the people said, “Do not you see they are your brothers?” She determined to kill them at night. They had, however, a Guinea-fowl to watch them.
When the Copper-Weather relative crept near, in order to kill the men, the Guinea-fowl made a noise to put them on their guard. They were thus warned of the danger; but afterwards they fell asleep again. Then she stole again upon them. The Guinea-fowl made a noise, but broke the rope by which it had been fastened, and ran home. She then killed her brothers. When the Guinea-fowl came near home it wept:— [[98]]
“The Copper-Weather relative has killed her brothers!
Alas! she has killed her brothers!”
The wife heard it, and said to her husband—
“Do not you hear what the bird weeps for?
You who sit here upon the ground working bamboos.”
The man said, “Come and turn yourself into a mighty thunderstorm, and I will be a strong wind.”
So they transformed themselves accordingly, and when they came near to the kraal (where their sons had been killed), they combined and became a fire, and as a fiery rain they burnt the kraal and all its inhabitants. [[99]]
[1] Vide Note to Fable 24, p. 56. [↑]
[2] Χ is the German ch, and ǃ the cerebral click of the Hottentot language, which is “sounded by sending up the tip of the tongue against the roof of the palate, and withdrawing it forcibly and suddenly.”—Tindall. [↑]
[3] Hottentot huts being merely made of skins stretched over a frame, are carried about by the people in their wanderings. [↑]